No choice! No choice! The buzzing hissed and snickered as the mirage of Alder’s study collapsed into billowing dust. By steel or shadow! Yes, shadow and steel! The void tossed Syra like a leaf caught in an updraft, whipping her upwards as its draconic goading slurred and stammered until three Erdrumic words cut through the thrumming: val en ferrun.

  “Val en ferrun,” Syra repeated. “Shadow and steel.” A calm realization brought silence to the void, and she floated in stillness for a moment. “That’s what you named yourself.”

  “Aye.”

  Marrak’s voice filled the void and Syra was flung backwards, as if being ripped from sleep.

  Light surged from the periphery until it burned. Her eyes burned. Her chest burned. And her hands, they burned the most. They ached and seized and curled as if grasping lightning itself. Around her, the vision faded as her scream brought the return of gravity, the scent of blood on grass, and the slow descent of a blue blade upon the shining stone.

  With the thread still tight in her grasp, Marrak’s soulstone pulsed and pulled like a shimmering pufferfish caught on silver wire. Its white aura surged as it hung in front of her, and she squinted in its crystalline radiance.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  So many points, she thought, amazed at the variety of facets that surrounded its starry core. But a stab of pity pricked her chest as the family of severed threads wafted from those points like seagrass in the tide. So many split ends.

  “Marrak gave up his position as Vayguard to be with her.”

  “The elders are already debating my banishment…Now I have no home.”

  Baba and Marrak’s voices echoed in her head and her gut twisted as guilt and confusion gripped her mind again.

  Damn it, is this truly the only way?

  Above her, the blue edge of Aidan’s sword flared and sparked as he plunged it into the barrier, slicing through the soulstone’s mana field.

  “You have no choice.” Alder’s voice rang out over Aidan’s heaving roar.

  Then, in a warm and calming tone that seemed to call from the thread itself, came Valen’s voice.

  “There’s always a choice.”

  A surprising peace washed over her as Aidan and the stone warred overhead. She stared at the thread in her hands and the burning eased away, replaced with a warmth like a parting handshake.

  Aye, there is.

  With a bittersweet ache, her grip relaxed. The thread slipped. The stone inched away. And Aidan’s blade fell upon the binding thread.